Microsoft Ignite 2018: Is Security Really What’s Stalling Your Cloud Migration?
Slowly but surely, businesses are making the move to the cloud.
By the end of 2016, 70 percent of businesses reported having at least one application in the cloud, according to an IDG report. But larger cloud migrations aren’t easy, and they often slow or stall, many times in the name of security concerns.
When cloud migrations hit roadblocks, however, CIOs, CISOs and other business should leaders look into how cultural pushback and issues with workload might instead be getting in the way, suggested Microsoft CISO Bret Arsenault, speaking at the 2018 Microsoft Ignite conference taking place in Orlando this week.
The 6 Reasons Tasks Fail and How to Get Back on Track
This was the issue that Arsenault discovered when moving 95 percent of applications to the cloud for Microsoft. At around the 56 percent migration mark, progress seemed to flag.
“Why did we stop progressing at this 56 percent point? It turns out there are six reasons why people don’t do something,” said Arsenault.
The six reasons, dubbed “FFUUEE,” are:
- Fair: The task doesn’t seem reasonable.
- Fear: The person performing the task is afraid of it.
- Understand: The task doesn’t make sense to the performer.
- Urgent: There’s a lack of pressure to complete the task.
- Entitled: The person doesn’t feel they should have to take the task on.
- Exhausted: The employee doesn’t have the bandwidth to complete the task.
While these reasons aren’t exclusive to the workplace, they certainly permeate into workplace tasks and can cause large IT projects to stall. Oftentimes, leadership doesn’t recognize that the issues are cultural.
MORE FROM BIZTECH: Avoid these four common cloud security mistakes!
“We think our engineers don’t understand, and so, sadly, we just created more training material and more sessions,” said Arsenault. The true issue, however, was that engineers were exhausted, but also that they didn’t feel a sense of urgency toward the project.
“It’s really funny, if you say you’re shutting down a data center on this date and if your app’s not moved it goes down, that creates a sense of urgency,” says Arsenault. Creating a deadline for the move, in addition to training and assuaging fears that cloud migration would eliminate IT jobs, helped to get the migration back on track.
“The lesson from our migration was: While the tech capabilities are fantastic, don’t lose sight of the FFUUEE,” says Arsenault.
Don’t miss a thing! Keep this page bookmarked for articles from the event. Follow us on Twitter at @BizTechMagazine, or the official conference Twitter account, @MS_Ignite, and join the conversation using the hashtag #MSIgnite.
